The Suspect (3 page)

He peered critically into the mirror and ran his fingers over his just-shaven jaw. He didn't like his face much. It was too smooth, and it looked a lot younger than the rest of him. Only when he was extremely tired did it assume any character. You needed lines and hollows, he thought, for character.

He stood back and took one last look: the legs were pretty good, anyway. Then he had strolled out to work in his garden. It was now afternoon. The first attack on the roses had hours before sent him retreating indoors to change his clothes. He was greasy with sweat, the knees of his jeans were grass stained, and there was at least one rip in his long-sleeved shirt. He didn't remember ever seeing his ex-wife in this condition, after a day in the garden.

He stood in the middle of the back yard and looked around at the chaos he had created. The small lawn was buried under a mountain of debris. It hadn't occurred to him that when he had done his pruning, the greenery would still exist. There seemed far too much of it to get rid of in any usual way. And he hadn't even started on the front yard yet. He wondered if he could just leave the stuff there, to wither and turn brown and shrink into a more manageable heap.

'Jesus, boss," said a voice behind him.

Alberg turned to see Freddie Gainer on the walk that led from the front of the house. He looked startlingly clean. "I've been gardening," said Alberg wearily. He wiped his forehead on his sleeve. "I am now quitting. And don't call me 'boss."

"You look like you've been in a war,” said Gainer.

Clean, tireless, and young, thought Alberg, staring at him. Also—and this was illusory—authoritative, in his peaked hat, short blue jacket, and navy pants with the wide yellow stripe.

"What the hell do you want?" said Alberg. "I want a beer.”

He tossed the hedge clippers to the ground and headed for his back door.

Gainer picked them up and followed him. He put the clippers on the floor inside the door. In the kitchen, he took off his hat.

Alberg got a beer from the fridge and opened it. He leaned against the counter and took a swallow. "Ah. That feels good. A shower, and I'll be human again." He glanced at the constable, then looked at him more sharply. "What the hell have you done to your hair?" It clung to his head in tight, coppery curls.

Gainer's face reddened. "I got it permed."

'Jesus Christ," said Alberg. He wondered if there was anything in Rules and Regulations yet about permanents. He resolved not to find out. "Your damned hat's not going to stay on, with all that fluff underneath it.”

"Yeah, it does," said Gainer, and showed him. "You can't even hardly notice it now, right?" He whipped off the hat. "What do you think, Staff? Women'll love it. I'm guaranteed."

"Then what do you care what I think?" said Alberg, irritated. "Did you get that done around here?" he said, as an afterthought.

"Yeah, in Sechelt. There's this girl I met, she's a hairdresser. She says they get as many guys as girls going in for this. It's supposed to last three months, she says. At least."

Alberg drank some more of his beer. His scratches stung. His head ached. He could already tell where he would be stiff and sore the next day. "You use different muscles," he said, feeling old, "attacking plants."

"Listen, Staff, the reason I'm here. We've got us a homicide, and the sarge said you'd want to handle it.”

Alberg stared at him. "Why the hell didn't you use the telephone?”

"I did, but there wasn't any answer. I guess you couldn't hear it outside.”

Alberg dumped the rest of his beer into the sink and went down the hall to the bathroom, stripping off his shirt. "Fill me in while I get dressed.”

It would be a domestic disturbance, he thought, splashing his face with cool water. Some guy crying and hugging his wife while she bled to death from sixteen stab wounds and the knife lying right next to him, his prints all over it. He splashed more water under his arms, over his chest, across the top of his back. Or a brawl at a beer parlor down the highway, two good-time buddies slashing at one another with broken bottles, one a little faster, a little angrier, than the other. In his twenty years on the force, Alberg had worked on fewer than a dozen homicides which hadn't solved themselves at the scene or within twenty-four hours.

No suspicious deaths of any kind had occurred in Sechelt since he'd arrived, eighteen months earlier.

He was rubbing his face and arms dry when he realized what Gainer was telling him.

He caught sight of himself in the mirror over the sink. He looked scrubbed and healthy and not at all tired, any more. Gainer, waiting in the hall, wondered hopefully if Alberg would decide that the occasion called for the uniform. Hell, he thought, he's probably forgotten where he put it.
 

CHAPTER 5

When they arrived at the house there were two blue-and-white patrol cars parked on the shoulder. Theirs made three. There was also an ambulance. Two white-coated attendants waited, leaning against the hood, for instructions.

Alberg saw an elderly couple watching from the end of the driveway which led into the yard next door. Across the street, a woman looked out from a window. A small boy cycled past, slowing to get a better look at what was going on.

Alberg and Gainer went through a gate in a tall laurel hedge and down a crushed gravel path to the front of the house. A constable was stationed at the door. Sid Sokolowski was giving instructions to a dark-haired, blue-eyed corporal when he saw them approaching. "Okay, Sanducci," he said, "get at it,” and the corporal went off purposefully toward the far side of the house. Alberg was convinced on little evidence that Sanducci was far more impressed with his own good looks than he ought to have been. He found the young corporal irritating.

Sergeant Sokolowski came up to him, a massive, muscular man whose notebook looked tiny clutched in his large paw.

"It happened within the last few hours, Staff. The guy's name was Carlyle Burke. He was eighty-five. Guy who found him isn't a hell of a lot younger—George Wilcox. He was a friend of the victim, lives down the road a ways. Dropped in to say hello and found a corpse."

"Where's Wilcox now?"

"Around back. Redding's with him.”

"Okay. Go 0n."

"The victim was struck on the head. No sign of a struggle, no sign of a break-in or a weapon. This Wilcox called in at two thirty-seven. Sanducci and Gainer got here in eight minutes. It's Sanducci's Italian blood. He oughta be a race-car driver." The sergeant was fond of categorizing people by blood. Mediterranean types were notoriously fast-moving and quick-tempered; Englishmen were cold and logical; the French couldn't tell the truth to save their lives; and then, of course, there was the lusty Slav....

"What else?" said Alberg.

Sokolowski checked his notebook. "I've sent Sanducci out to start looking for the weapon. Called the detachment, got more guys coming to help him and talk to the neighbors. Next
I was figuring to get on the blower to Vancouver."

It was a small but rambling house, comfortably sprawled upon a large lot. The laurel which hedged the property on three sides was eight feet tall and about six feet thick. The yard and the house were sleek, well maintained.

"Yeah,” said Alberg. "Get on to Vancouver. But all we want is an ident man. If he moves his tail, he can make the four thirty ferry. Anything else?"

"The old fellow who found the body says the victim had a habit of leaving his doors open.” Sokolowski was sweating in the afternoon sun. "We oughta get him to take a look around, see if anything's missing. Doesn't look like it to me, but you never know.”

They heard a car pull up with a squeal of brakes. It's going to look like the detachment parking lot out there, thought Alberg.

"Okay," he said. "Sounds good. Get the reinforcements to work fast. We want the weapon, and we want something from the neighbors—an individual, a vehicle, sounds from the victim's house—whatever we can get."

Three constables and a corporal arrived through the gate in the hedge and stood nearby, waiting to be dispatched.

"I'll talk to Wilcox," Alberg went on. "Get Redding to call the district coroner's office. Gainer, go tell those ambulance guys not to hold their breath out there. Get the place roped off and sealed,” he said to the sergeant. "And Sid, when the guys check the neighborhood, don't let them forget the beach. Anybody wandering around out there, any boats close to shore." Sokolowski nodded. "There's one thing," he said. "A salmon in the kitchen sink. ln a plastic bag. Looks like he bought it today, or somebody gave it to him, and he never got around to putting it in the fridge."

"Did Wilcox bring it?"

"He says no.”

"Okay. Good." Alberg grinned. "So we've got something specific to ask the civilians: Any salmon peddlers around today?"

Gainer returned from talking to the ambulance attendants. "They say they'd just as soon hang around," he said. "The hospital can get them on the radio, if they need them."

Alberg sighed. "Better get the ropes up fast, Sid. This place is going to be the Number One attraction around here. Come on, Freddie. Let's take a look inside."

The flower beds in front of the windows were undisturbed. The concrete steps were unmarked. The constable standing by the half-open door stood stiffly aside as Alberg approached. He looked a bit pale.

"This your first homicide, Constable?" Ken Coomer had joined the detachment in January, after a two-year posting in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.

"It's the first one I've actually been involved in, Staff. That is—I mean, the first one I've been on the scene of." He looked to be about sixteen, which of course was impossible. "I've seen road-accident stuff that's a lot worse than this. It's just that—it's deliberate, you know what l mean, Staff?" His forehead crinkled as he tried to explain. "I mean, it's just a lot different, that's all, when it's deliberate."

Alberg nodded and went past him, into the hall, followed by Gainer.

The house smelled of flowers. That was the first thing he noticed.

At the end of the hall he stood looking at the body, which lay directly ahead, on a rug in front of a large window. Then he gazed around the room. It was remarkably serene. The sweet scent of blossoms was stronger; apparently it came from a vase of large pink flowers, lush and frilled, that stood on a coffee table in front of a chesterfield. Alberg could see nothing in the room that hinted of violence or even dissonance; nothing but the body. And two books on the floor nearby, one of them splayed open, face down.

Gainer was breathing heavily at his shoulder. Alberg, hands in his pockets, walked closer to what had been Carlyle Burke. He lay on his right side, almost graceful, a tall man, thin, legs arranged with peculiar elegance on the polished hardwood floor, head and upper torso resting on a brightly colored, homemade-looking rug. Very near him was a rocking chair, half on and half off the rug, one of its motionless rockers poised above his left hip.

"It's neat, for a homicide,” said Gainer behind him. Alberg glanced over his shoulder at the constable. "Tidy, I mean,” said Gainer, almost cheerfully.

There were no rings on the dead man's fingers. Carlyle Burke had been wearing a pair of white trousers and a pale blue shirt when someone shattered his skull. There wasn't much blood on his clothes, but his head, which was almost bald, lay in a pool of it. Sokolowski was right; he hadn't been dead for very long. His left eye looked hopelessly out across the floor. Alberg reached down, gently, and brushed the lid closed.

Nothing appeared out of order in the rest of the house. In the bedroom, a single bed, a straight-backed chair, a small dresser with a mirror. On the dresser sat a large rectangular lump, covered with a red-and-white checked cloth. Alberg lifted a corner of the cloth. Beneath it was a cage containing a large green bird with a hooked beak. It let out a shriek.

"Jesus," said Gainer, whirling from the closet, which was full of clothes hanging from rods and stacked in drawers. Alberg dropped the cloth, and the bird was silent. In another room they found a great many bookshelves and a large ivory piano. ln the bathroom, clean towels. In the kitchen, the salmon in the sink.

"Okay, Freddie," said Alberg. "Let's go see this Wilcox.”

"What's your rank?" said George Wilcox. He was sitting on a bench in the middle of a small lawn behind the house.

Alberg noticed more flower beds, and a tall pine tree close to the beach, and under it, set upon wooden blocks, an overturned aluminum rowboat. He heard the sea washing upon the sand.

"I'm a staff sergeant," he said. "The fellow with the curls here is a constable."

The old man was probably in his late seventies, not very tall, maybe five feet seven or eight, 160 pounds or so, with longish white hair that curled out from the sides of his head in waves. He had bright brown eyes and looked strong and fit, despite his age. He was slightly pale but composed. He watched Constable Redding disappear around the front of the house. "Where's he going?"

"The sergeant's going to put him to work.”

"Going to be a hell of a hullabaloo around here, once people find out what's going on,” said George Wilcox. "They must know something's up already. Those fellows, they came up here with their lights flashing and all that, did they?"

"Probably," said Alberg, thinking of Sanducci. The old man seemed relaxed as he sat there, hands on his knees, peering up at them. He was enjoying the fact that he'd sent for them, and they had come.

"And now you two. You're the boss, right? That why you aren't wearing a uniform?"

"Yeah," said Alberg. "I'm the boss.” He pushed his hands into his pockets and continued to study George Wilcox, content to let him chatter on. The man wasn't disheveled. His gray sweater, white shirt, and gray trousers bore no stains, his face and hands were unmarked.

"They said you'd want to ask me some questions,” the old man said.

Alberg nodded. "First I'd like you to show me how you happened to find him. Can you do that?"

"Of course I can do it.” George pushed himself up from the bench. They walked around to the front of the house, single file, Gainer leading the way, George in the middle.